


Nature Sounds

by galadrieljones



Series: The Last of Us: Short Fictions [1]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Aftermath, Canon Era, Comfort, Ellie's persistence, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Joel's stoicism, Safety, Teamwork, calm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-25 01:11:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14965883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galadrieljones/pseuds/galadrieljones
Summary: On their way to Jackson from Pennsylvania, Joel and Ellie make a stopover somewhere in the safety of central Nebraska. That night, out of her need to process what happened to Sam and Henry, Ellie asks Joel what she would have to do if he were to become infected.





	Nature Sounds

They were somewhere in the flat, endless brown expanse that was the Great Plains, USA. Joel had hot-wired a car back in New Castle, PA, and together they drove on the lonely I-80 all the way through the midwest, not taking a break till they reached the smack middle of Nebraska. They found a Wal-mart in a city called North Platte, and it was such a bum-fuck empty place that there were still cans of food and bottles of liquor on the shelves. They decided to spend the night. It was amazing. Ellie wanted to live here forever. They hadn’t seen a clicker in near on thirty miles.

They laid out padded bedrolls in the outdoor section. Joel rigged up a generator and an outdoor lighting display, and Ellie found a CD of nature sounds, which she played in an old working stereo so that it sounded and felt like outside. It was the prettiest Wal-mart that ever existed, and they ate canned chili for dinner, cooked in a crock pot. Joel nursed himself a glass of brown liquor afterward, poured from a bottle with a thick red cap. Ellie asked if she could try a little. He made a big sigh and let her have a sip. She thought it was disgusting, and it burned her throat, but it felt like a milestone, and though she didn’t ask for anymore, she was glad to have tried some whiskey with Joel there in that Wal-mart in Nebraska. She made kool-aid after that, using some bottled water they’d discovered way back in the storage warehouse. It tasted glorious and stained her whole mouth red, and this was the best night she’d spent in some time.

After a while, they lay down in their bedrolls and stared up at the Wal-mart stars. They were imagined stars, simulated by the twinkle lights in Joel’s display, but to Ellie, they were real. They left the nature sounds on to play on repeat all night. Joel was tired, Ellie could sense. More tired than he usually seemed. He had driven about fifteen hours straight with a couple bathroom breaks in between and stops for gas, and it was nice now, because at the Wal-mart, they were both able to come upon a decent change of clothes. It was getting colder, but the cold was sort of unsure of itself as some days, it would be in the seventies or eighties, and then the next it would plunge to fifty-five. In the girl’s section, Ellie found a jacket that she liked, but Joel seemed unconcerned with the changing of the seasons. Very little seemed to stick on him, yet she sort of knew it was all in there, just deep.

He lay on his back with his eyes closed. He did not move at all except for his chest, rising and falling in an even fashion. Ellie couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking she was hearing things, but it was just the nature noise CD, and so she would try to fall into the rhythm of Joel’s breathing, but it was no use. At some point, she rolled around and couldn’t take it anymore.

“You got bed bugs or something?” said Joel. He wasn’t asleep either. But he was still just lying there, perfectly still with his eyes closed. “You haven’t stopped moving since we said goodnight.”

“Sorry,” said Ellie. She sat up and flipped her knife open like a compulsion. “I keep hearing things.”

“We checked the sound traps twice. Nothing’s getting in here without our knowledge.”

“I know.” She sighed.

At this point, he must have sensed her apprehension. He finally opened his eyes and turned in his bedroll to face her, propped up on an elbow. “Something on your mind?” he said.

Ellie folded up the knife and stuck it back in her pocket. She bit off a hangnail. She’d got to wash her hands with soap. They were the cleanest they’d been since the QZ. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Which _it_?” he said.

She looked at him. “Sam. And Henry. I never saw anything like that before.”

Joel said nothing at first. He sort of looked away. So she continued.

“What—what if that happened,” she said. “To us.”

“What exactly do you mean?”

“Like—what if you got bit, Joel?”

He groaned at this and went back to laying. He closed his eyes. “I’m sleeping.”

“I’m fucking serious.”

“Ellie, go to sleep.”

“No.”

“What do you want me to say?” he said. Every time he opened his eyes to look at her it felt big and important.

“Tell me what to do.”

“It ain’t gonna happen, so you don’t need to worry.”

“You can’t know that,” said Ellie.

“Yes, I can.”

“Jesus,” she said. She leaned back dramatically and squeezed her eyes shut. “You’re such a fucking shithead sometimes, you know that?”

“A shithead?” said Joel. “Seriously?”

“Just tell me what I should do,” she said. “Would I have to—you know, kill you?”

He got all serious now, and he was staring right at her in the light from the fake Wal-mart sky. “Ellie.”

“Yes or no, Joel. One word answers are kind of your thing, so if you leave me hanging here, I’ll know it’s just you being a shithead.”

“No,” he said.

“No?”

“I would do it myself. Now, can we get on with sleeping?”

“Then what about me?” she said. “After. What would I do?”

He took a deep breath, eyes shut again. The nature sounds had gone on to a track that seemed specific to the rainforest. There were weird bird noises and things that sounded foreign and strange. Joel became suddenly still and composed as if back in control of his and their entire situation. Everything was easier for him when he was in control. “You would keep on driving,” he said.

“Driving where?”

“To Jackson,” he said.

“How the fuck do I get there?”

“You just—” _Deep Joel breath._ “You follow the I-80.”

“The I-80?”

“That’s the highway we came in on. Follow it, heading west, until you hit a city called Rock Springs.”

“Rock Springs,” said Ellie. “Rock Springs. Rock Springs. Got it. Then what?”

“Then, get off and head north up 141 all the way until you start seeing signs for the Snake River, and Jackson Hole.”

“Snake River?” said Ellie. “What’s that? Like a whole river full of fucking snakes?”

Joel sighed. “It ain’t literal,” he said. “It’s just a name. But, yeah, there might be snakes. But no more than you’d see anywhere else. It ain’t something to worry about.”

“Okay, okay,” said Ellie. “So, I-80 to 141 at Rock Springs, then north all the way up to Snake River.”

“You got it.”

“And what the hell do I do once I get there? How do I find your brother Tommy?”

“The only way I know to get to Tommy’s at that point is just to follow the river going north. You stay low and quiet. I really don’t have any idea what it is you’re looking for, but you oughta know it when you see it. If you find an organized group, you be cautious. They ain’t gonna be like hunters. They’ll have gear, and they’ll be on the up and up. You tell them Joel sent you, and that you’re looking for Tommy. If they don’t know what you’re on about, you run as fast as you can, and you get the hell out of there and reevaluate your situation. You hear me?”

“Okay.”

“Do you got it?”

“I got it,” she said. She was wrapped up in his instruction like it was a campfire story. He was staring at her something intense. “I got it.”

“Good,” he said, and he took a deep breath and settled back into his bedroll and closed his eyes. “Now, time for sleeping.”

“Joel,” she said.

“What is it.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” she said. “Like, is it from that Harley ride you took? The one you were telling Henry about?”

“Yeah,” said Joel, though she could tell he was being nonspecific. “That, and I just know.”

“But how?”

“Because I’ve been alive for a good stretch, Ellie.” He opened his eyes one more time to look at her. She had never once been so invested in anything anyone had to say as she was in this moment. “One day, you’ll know a lot more stuff, too. It just…takes time. Understand?”

She smiled, weirdly relieved all of a sudden. “Yeah.”

“Alright then.”

She got back into her bedroll and cuddled in and turned to face him one last time. The nature sounds had become something like a water fall, or maybe just rain.  “Joel,” she said.

He grunted. “Ellie, for the love—”

“Just one more thing. I swear.”

He glanced at her. Sometimes his eyes were gray but sometimes they were more like a weird brownish blue, and she couldn’t always tell the difference. The light was always changing. “Go on,” said Joel.

“Please don’t die,” she said, honestly.

“What?”

“I don’t—I don’t wanna have to do all that shit without you. Okay?”

Somewhere in the fake night in the fake sounds of fake nature, there were locusts. Joel near on smiled. “Okay, kiddo,” he said. “I won’t die. Now, sleep.”

This time, she listened. She put her head on the pillow and closed her eyes, and in this safe haven, dreaming took her no time at all.


End file.
